At the recent Oscars, the best animated feature film was won by Hayao Miyazaki's new work "What kind of life do you want to live", which is also the second time that Miyazaki has won this award after "Spirited Away".
But today I'm not going to talk about this one, but another work nominated with it.
In the list of Oscar nominees, it is particularly special. Compared with Ghibli, Disney, Sony and other bigwigs, the producer of this film can be said to be unknown, and the director is also the first time to direct an animated film.
Contrary to its fame, it has a super high evaluation, with a freshness of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and a Douban score of 9.1, many people directly call it the best animation of the year after watching it, an absolute dark horse.
Robot Dream
It's a story of encounters and misses.
It may sound cliché, but the director's brilliance lies in the fact that he uses a little clever handling to make this commonplace story seem particularly sincere and moving.
The protagonists of the film are a dog and a robot, and there is no gender, age, or judgment of appearance, let alone family, wealth, class, and other social identity concepts.
Another special point is that there is not a single line in the whole film, and it completely relies on action expressions to convey emotions and express emotions.
Abandoning these realistic factors and external resistance, focusing on pure emotional presentation, also gives the audience off the screen more room for substitution and interpretation.
A puppy who lives alone in New York eats takeout, watches TV, and plays games at home, and doesn't go out to socialize, and has no friends.
Accidentally catching a glimpse of the lively scene of the neighbor's house made him feel lonely.
It just so happened that a companion robot commercial was playing on TV: Are you lonely?
The advertising slogan hit the puppy's heart, and he immediately placed an order.
The arrival of robots has made a big difference in the life of puppies.
They are inseparable, going out together, visiting the park, roller skating, and dancing happily to the music.
Paddle a river together, overlook New York from the observation deck together, eat hot dogs together, and take a big head photo together...... The puppy is much more lively than before, and the whole city seems to be more vibrant.
But life often happens with accidents.
One day, the puppy takes the robot to the beach for a vacation.
The blue sky and white clouds, the wide sea, and the lively crowd make the robot extremely excited, and it follows everyone's example and plays with the water to its heart's content.
When they are tired of playing, they lie on the beach to bask in the sun and sleep until the evening.
But when he was about to go home, the robot malfunctioned and couldn't move, and the dog couldn't pull it up with all his might.
There were only two of them left on the beach, and the phone here was also broken, and seeing that it was getting late, the dog had to go home alone first to find a way.
The puppy, who hadn't slept all night, came to the beach again the next day with a maintenance manual, only to find that the attraction was closed and wouldn't be open again until next summer.
After submitting an application to the government and failing to sneak in, all you can do is wait.
As a result, they were forced to separate.
The puppy can only continue to live alone, and the robot just lies motionless on the beach.
Originally, they would not intersect again in the days when they were separated, but one of the touching points of the film is that the director uses dreams to continue the emotion, a metaphor for the change of mood after the two part.
The robot trapped on the beach had a total of three dreams.
The first time a crew of three rabbits came to the beach, and after they poured a bucket of oil on the robot, the robot regained its vitality and happily hummed a song to find the puppy's house.
When I knocked on the door several times and got no answer, I woke up from a dream.
Instead of saving it, the three rabbits removed one of its legs to mend a hole in the boat.
Dreams are the catharsis of emotions and the expression of the subconscious.
At this point, the robot wanted nothing more than to get back to the puppy, and he didn't know much about what the separation meant.
Winter is coming, snowflakes are falling, and a thick layer of ice has formed on the robot's body.
In its sleep, it broke through the ice and still hummed happily to the puppy's house.
When I rang the doorbell and waited, I heard the same song, and the puppy came back, but there was a robot that was exactly like itself by its side, and they were holding hands and looking very happy.
The robot's expression ranged from shock to fear to heartbreak, and finally dragged its long arms back to the beach like a deflated ball. The dream woke up and it was still under the ice.
The first dream ended in a hurry, and this time the robot waited for the puppy, only to find that someone had taken its place next to it.
This also means that after a long period of separation, the robots go from confusion and anticipation at the beginning to doubt each other's emotions, fearing that they will be left behind, forgotten, and replaced.
By the third time, the dream became fantastical, and it dreamed that it had entered the world of the Wizard of Oz, and the brightly colored plants moved, and it danced with the flowers, which posed as puppies.
With cheerful singing and dancing, the robot once again arrives in front of the puppy's house, only to hear the entire building collapse. The dream wakes up, and it's a cold reality.
This time hints at the end of the emotion, although the shadow of the puppy will still appear in the memory, but the end result is that the place that it has always wanted to go back to is gone, and it slowly accepts the fact that the puppy will not appear again.
While the robot struggles with the parting dream, the puppy is also tormented by longing.
Although it has returned to its former solitary life, its state of mind has changed, and the figure of the robot always appears in front of it inadvertently.
For example, once a puppy went skiing alone, was bullied and injured, on the bus back, it put down the snacks that could not be opened, leaned against the glass window alone, and subconsciously drew the appearance of a robot.
Compared with the previous scene where the two traveled together, sadness overflowed the screen.
During the separation, the puppy also had a dream.
It built a snowman, and the snowman came to life. It quietly follows the snowman's path, walks around street corners, and takes the subway, very similar to the scene where he and the robot traveled before.
The snowman spotted the puppy and took it to bowling, and the snowman greeted the others warmly, but the puppy reached out to him but was refused.
When the puppy falls and is ridiculed, only the snowman stands up to help it, and at that moment, the snowman's face turns into a robot.
The puppy also woke up from the dream.
Dreams are subconscious projections, and the puppy in life is introverted and timid and cautious, but in his heart he longs to become lively and popular, so he imagines a passionate snowman.
The snowman has become a robot, which means that the companionship of the robot has given the puppy unprecedented courage.
The puppy began to try to make new friends, and the duck lady he met taught him to fly a kite, took him to fish, and rode a motorcycle, and had a relaxing time.
But as Ms. Duck went abroad to start a new life, this brief friendship also ended.
The robot on the beach got to know the mother bird who came to build a nest, saw the birth of a new life, cheered and encouraged the most timid bird, and learned to say goodbye on its own initiative.
Unfortunately, in the end, the robot did not wait for the puppy, and the puppy dug into the ground and only found the robot's stump.
Fortunately, they have all started a new life.
The puppy buys a new robot, and the robot that was dumped in the garbage dump also encounters the kind-hearted raccoon and reassembles it.
But those good memories of each other's existence have not disappeared.
When he comes to the beach again, the dog will tell the robot not to break down if it gets wet, and when the robot takes the raccoon's hand, it knows that it hurts if he can't use force.
Robots make puppies learn to open their hearts, and puppies also make robots trust the world.
At the end of the story, the director arranges a gentle "encounter".
The robot sees the puppy by the window, it has a new robot by its side, and the raccoon on the balcony is baking bread for himself. Instead of going downstairs, it played the most familiar song.
Across the noisy street, the puppy keenly captured the singing, and the two completed a dance together, which was also a tacit goodbye.
Some romantic, some sad, but ultimately relieved.
Missing is always the key word in life.
The relationship between people is about meeting and separating again and again, and learning how to love in it.
Of course, there are regrets, but if you can't go back, don't be entangled, the sea of life, it is a blessing to be able to walk side by side for a short time, just like the lyrics sing, the faint intersection does not leave a mark, but at least it has experienced the most gentle resonance.
Both the puppy and the robot take the beauty they have learned from each other to enjoy the next part of the journey, and hopefully you will too.